Last semester I wrote on the topic of the Recording Industry Association of America's ongoing campaign against file-sharing. Spring semester has brought with it a new calendar year (as it often does) and now seems like an appropriate time to survey the latest non-Grammy-related injustices facing the music industry in the United States. Predictably, the big ones can be traced back to the above-mentioned organization.
As of September 2005, the RIAA had filed lawsuits against more than 13,000 file-sharers, a number of whom didn't even have computers, and even one dead woman. Since then the number has risen to more than 17,000, and it looks as if some of the cases will actually go to trial in the near future as larger numbers of the accused are refusing out of court settlements.
Recently, however, the RIAA has shifted its focus to two new areas. The first of these is the selling of iPods already loaded with songs, a practice that has become more popular as discontinued iPod models such as the 'mini' have become collectors' items. Earlier this week, the organization announced that it considered this to be another form of 'piracy' and it would begin to warn sellers of the supposed illegality of the act. As with the majority of the RIAA's other accusations, this claim rests on shaky legal ground for a number of reasons.
Whenever a person buys a recording, he or she purchases with it the 'Fair Use' license to duplicate or alter it for his or her own use. They can also resell the recording with the catch being that the license to use it is sold along with it.
This explains why Cheapo gave me $4 for a Bright Eyes album but refused to touch my burned copy of Bruce Willis' The Return of Bruno. It is completely legal to sell a preloaded iPod and then erase your own copies of the songs.
Another fault in the group's claim is that, contrary to the collective hallucination of Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI and UMG, the RIAA does not control the entirety of the human race's creative musical output and has no right to sue on behalf of independent labels whose songs are exchanged in this manner. Whether any of these arguments will be heard in court remains to be seen.
More controversial and certainly more far reaching is the RIAA's joint effort with the Motion Picture Association of America to restrict all reproduction of copyrighted material, be it for personal use or otherwise. The Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005, introduced at the very end of last year, seeks to abolish the principle of 'Fair Use,' the legal precedent that currently protects a consumer's right to do everything from making a tape of a CD to recording an episode of 'The Office' they would have otherwise missed.
This ability to transfer media to analogue devices such as tape players and video recorders is in many ways the last freedom currently enjoyed by consumers over the use of their purchased media, as technology preventing digital copying is being packaged with more products. If this act becomes law, Americans will likely see a day in the very near future where all uploading, downloading, copying and other currently legal uses of copyrighted material will be prohibited under any terms not directly sanctioned by the RIAA and MPAA.
